Book Description
A gorgeous, expansive piece of narrative non-fiction about care, dependence, and what it means to breathe in an age of environmental catastrophe
A few moments after birth we begin to use our lungs for the first time. From then on, we must continue breathing for as long as we are alive. And although this mostly happens unconsciously, in a society plagued by anxiety, climate change, environmental racism, and illness, there are more and more instances that “teach us about the privilege that is breathing.”
Why do we so easily forget the air that we breathe in common? What does it mean to breathe when the environment that sustains life now threatens it? And how can life continue to flourish under conditions that are increasingly toxic? To approach these questions, Jamieson Webster draws on psychoanalytic theory and reflects on her own experiences as an asthmatic teenager, a deep-sea diver, a palliative psychologist during COVID, a psychoanalyst attentive to the somatic, and a new mother.
The result is a compassionate and timely exploration of air and breathing as a way to undo the pervasive myth of the individual by considering our dependence on invisible systems, on one another, and the way we have violently neglected this important aspect of life.
Praise For This Book
Literary Hub, A Most Anticipated Book of the YearThe Millions, A Most Anticipated Book of the Year
"Roving and philosophical . . . A question running through Webster’s book is why such obvious reminders of our shared vulnerability—whether because of Covid or climate change—have yielded so little by way of solidarity . . . Webster is constantly making surprising associations . . . [Her] seriousness of intention is matched by her lightness of touch, prying open spaces that usually feel closed." —Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times
"An eloquent reminder of something we take for granted: that we’re breathing . . . Webster sees her subject everywhere, carefully attuned to all the ways that breath—our various uses of it—fills our everyday lives . . . If there is a running theme, it is that talking—real talking, the giving of oneself through speech—has a value and a meaning beyond the words themselves." —Dennis Duncan, The Washington Post
"It is surprising that the subject of breathing has attracted so little psychoanalytical interest. Jamieson Webster, New York psychoanalyst and professor at The New School for Social Research, addresses this gap and examines the phenomenon of breathing from various perspectives . . . In my opinion, one of the strengths of the publication lies in the fact that the interweaving of inner and outer realities, the situating of the subject in sociopolitical spheres, conveys what she later formulates: 'psychoanalysis does have a social aspiration.' In her explanations, Webster repeatedly zooms out from an individual to a social level. On Breathing is a truly exciting exploration and enthralling experience." —Maximilian Römer, ROOM
"An exploration of what it might mean to think about breathing psychoanalytically, proceeding more impressionistically than argumentatively, more poetically than narratively . . . The forgetting of breath that Webster posits—a forgetting of air, and of our communality—enables us to blithely make breath unbreathable, life unlivable." —Meghan Racklin, The Brooklyn Rail
"[Webster's] work possesses an empathy that excites the question at the heart of psychoanalysis: how can one, how can I, live?" —Annette LePique, Newcity Lit
"Thoughtful, poetic . . . Through closer attention to the practice of breathing, Webster believes that we can rebuild broken and fractured connections with our bodies and with each other." —Booklist
"The narrative boldly attempts to bridge personal memoir with academic discourse, achieving moments of profound insight . . . In examining our relationship with breath in an age of climate crisis and pandemic anxiety, the book offers valuable perspectives on how personal and collective experiences of breathing intersect with broader social and environmental concerns . . . An ambitious meditation." —Kirkus Reviews
"With its deep care and attention to the most elemental human activity and its strange flows and blockages, On Breathing is a beautifully crafted antidote to our age of chronic bodily alienation and anxiety." —Josh Cohen, author of How to Live. What to Do: In Search of Ourselves in Life and Literature
"When I read Jamieson Webster, I fall in love with life again. Her deep, calm, wild, and confronting intelligence leaves an essential human fingerprint on a time of fear and catastrophe. We all breathe within this book." —Deborah Levy, author of Real Estate
"It is very unusual for a book to be at once so lucid and so evocative. In Webster’s hands, breathing becomes endlessly absorbing such that you end up thinking it really is the only issue, in life and then in psychoanalysis—one hiding in plain sight. An amazing feat." —Adam Phillips, author of On Giving Up
